{"id":15878,"date":"2016-03-18T08:02:17","date_gmt":"2016-03-18T15:02:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/cranking-up-pressure-garland-ready-for-first-senate-visits\/"},"modified":"2016-03-18T08:02:17","modified_gmt":"2016-03-18T15:02:17","slug":"cranking-up-pressure-garland-ready-for-first-senate-visits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/cranking-up-pressure-garland-ready-for-first-senate-visits\/","title":{"rendered":"Cranking up pressure, Garland ready for first Senate visits"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 <\/strong>President Barack Obama\u2019s choice for the Supreme Court commenced courtesy calls with senators Thursday as Democrats began the next phase of their drive to put unbearable election-year pressure on Republicans refusing to consider any Obama pick.<\/p>\n

Under the glare of television lights, Merrick Garland met with Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, a day after Obama finally gave a name, face and judicial record to his effort to fill the vacancy left by last month\u2019s death of Justice Antonin Scalia.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe court would be a lot better off,\u201d with Garland as a justice, Leahy told reporters.<\/p>\n

A meeting with the Senate\u2019s top Democrat, Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, was scheduled for later in the day.<\/p>\n

But even before Garland \u2014 a 63-year-old moderate, a top appellate court judge and former prosecutor \u2014 could hold his first session, the Senate\u2019s Republican leader indicated he would not budge from his party\u2019s refusal to consider a replacement for Scalia until the next president takes office in January.<\/p>\n

Stating what he called \u201can obvious point,\u201d Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the two parties disagree over filling the vacancy and it is time for lawmakers to turn to other issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cRepublicans think the people deserve a voice in this critical decision. The president does not,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

With the issue coloring this fall\u2019s contests for control of the White House and Senate, Democrats have spent weeks trying to link Senate GOP resistance to a court nominee to opposition also voiced by Donald Trump, the Republican presidential front-runner abhorred by many Republican leaders.<\/p>\n

\u201cDonald Trump won\u2019t make America great again, but he will make Republicans the minority again\u201d in the Senate, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., mockingly employing the billionaire candidate\u2019s campaign slogan, said as Senate Democrats staged a news conference outside the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

Earlier, Reid noted McConnell\u2019s opposition to considering any Obama selection, which the GOP leader announced within hours of Scalia\u2019s death and a month before Garland was chosen.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat sort of \u2018punch first, ask questions later leadership\u2019 is exactly what we\u2019ve come to expect from Donald Trump,\u201d Reid said in a speech at the liberal Center for American Progress. He said McConnell \u201cis sacrificing the Republican majority to allow Donald Trump to pick the nominee.\u201d<\/p>\n

The White House said that after a two-week Senate recess, Garland will meet with the committee chairman, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. Grassley has been a chief focus of Democratic attacks for refusing to let the committee hold a hearing for anyone Obama picked, helping to doom the nomination.<\/p>\n

McConnell has refused to meet with Garland. But the planned meeting with Grassley \u2014 which his aides conceded could occur \u2014 underscored a willingness by a small but growing cadre of GOP senators to say they\u2019d see the nominee, and in some cases take the process even further.<\/p>\n

\u201cI meet with anybody, and that would include him,\u201d said Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz.<\/p>\n

Flake said if a Democrat were elected president in November, he would want the Senate to consider Garland\u2019s nomination during a postelection, lame-duck session because \u201cbetween him and somebody that a President Clinton might nominate, I think the choice is clear.\u201d<\/p>\n

Flake\u2019s comment showed how Obama and the leading Democratic presidential contender, Hillary Clinton, have had a good cop-bad cop effect on some Republicans, who consider Clinton likely to make a more liberal selection should she enter the White House.<\/p>\n

GOP Sens. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Susan Collins of Maine, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, Orrin Hatch of Utah and Rob Portman of Ohio also expressed an openness to meeting with Garland. Ayotte and Portman are among a half-dozen GOP senators in competitive re-election contests who Democrats hope will be pressured into backing hearings and a vote on Garland or be punished for their refusal by voters.<\/p>\n

Opposition by most Republicans means Garland\u2019s confirmation remains an uphill climb. One reason for the intense combat over Justice Antonin Scalia\u2019s replacement is that Garland would tilt the court\u2019s 4-4 balance in the liberal direction after decades of conservative dominance.<\/p>\n

Garland is chief judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, considered just a step below the Supreme Court in its clout because of its jurisdiction over administration policy.<\/p>\n

A Harvard Law School graduate, Garland clerked for liberal Justice William Brennan Jr., an appointee of Republican President Dwight Eisenhower. As a federal prosecutor, he oversaw the investigation and prosecutions in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing case and the case against Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writers Matthew Daly, Kathleen Hennessey, Mary Clare Jalonick and Josh Lederman contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

This story has been corrected to show five remaining GOP senators, not four, opposed confirming Garland to an appellate court judgeship in 1997.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 President Barack Obama\u2019s choice for the Supreme Court commenced courtesy calls with senators Thursday as Democrats began the next phase of their drive to put unbearable election-year pressure on Republicans refusing to consider any Obama pick. Under the glare of television lights, Merrick Garland met with Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the top […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":15879,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-15878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15878"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=15878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}